AFGHANS' STUBBORN HEROIN HABIT

Economy Remains Hooked on Profits from Trafficking

Haji Laly used to till golden wheat fields far larger than the 80 scorched
and cracked hectares now under his care. But while his crop may be much
smaller today, the wispy pink flowers are maturing into green bulbs that
carry the promise of lucrative payback.

"You know," the 48-year-old farmer says, "Russia was the bane of our
existence. They came, they attacked, they destroyed our fields. Russia
planted our fields with mines, so we had little plots. So we were compelled
to grow poppy."

The former Soviet Union's 10-year occupation of Afghanistan transformed
Laly, like the majority of farmers here, from a contributor to his
country's breadbasket to the first link in the international chain of
heroin trafficking.

This month, the brown paste from the poppies now being harvested across
Afghanistan in fields such as his will be manufactured into high-grade
heroin destined for the streets of Istanbul, Hamburg, Amsterdam and Moscow.

Laly savours the sweet irony of helping create a generation of drug addicts
in the capital from where invading soldiers were dispatched in the 1980s to
wreak havoc on his country.

"We are going to kill this enemy," he says.

Six months after its liberation from the Taliban, Afghanistan still clings
to its status as the world's leading supplier of heroin.

The Taliban may have fallen, and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist
network may be on the run, but the illicit industry that was bin Laden's
No. 1 source of income remains untouched.

Military officials here don't believe al-Qaeda continues to profit from the
poppy, but it's difficult to say for certain because much of the Afghan
opium trade has been pushed underground in recent months. Local warlords,
many of whom are jockeying for position for next month's grand council to
select a new government, are believed to be the beneficiaries of drug money.

One fact is incontrovertible. No one -- local authorities, the
international armies stationed here, foreign aid agencies -- has been able
to stop the trafficking.

Afghanistan's interim government cannot enforce its poppy ban because the
crop offers farmers their only relief from grinding poverty. The U.S.-led
military is preoccupied with rooting out al-Qaeda terrorists -- not making
new enemies among locals by torching their poppy fields.

Laly motions to an Afghan army checkpoint, barely visible on the road about
a kilometre away from his poppy field. "They don't come and ask why we are
growing," he says. "We still don't know why they haven't banned us."

The United Nations estimates that eastern and southern Af-ghanistan's poppy
field could yield up to 2,700 tonnes of opium by August. In the 1990s,
Afghan-istan grew to be the supplier of 70 per cent of the world's heroin,
moving up to 5,000 tonnes a year at the peak of productivity. About 90 per
cent of Afghan heroin goes to Europe and Russia.

Paul Williams, author of Al-Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror, says heroin
trafficking was the top source of al-Qaeda revenue, a bigger cash generator
than the international fundraising network of 150 Islamist organizations,
and donations from sympathetic and rich Muslim extremists.

"The money comes from heroin, not from (bin Laden's father's) personal
holdings," former bin Laden associate Ali Abul Nazzar told the FBI in a
statement last year, several months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The media keep writing about the emir's construction companies, his
currency trading firms and the Themar al-Mirbaraka Company that grows
sesame and white corn. They want people to believe that al-Qaeda is
dependent on sesame seeds. Of course, this is ridiculous."

Bin Laden arrived in Af-ghanistan several months before the Taliban seized
control of the country in 1996. In the six years he propped up the Taliban,
he netted as much as $1 billion a year trafficking in heroin, money he used
to underwrite the expansion of his international terrorist network. United
Nations groups are satisfied a link existed between the Taliban and
al-Qaeda drug trafficking.

Worldwide pressure forced the Taliban to ban poppy production two years
ago. Bin Laden's profits still soared. Low supply inflated the cost of
heroin almost 10 times between February 2000 and February 2002 from $30 a
kilogram to $400 a kilogram, according to UN figures.

When the Taliban regime finally collapsed late last year, farmers scurried
to take advantage of the power vacuum to plant fresh poppies. By the time
the interim government of Hamid Karzai officially banned poppies in
mid-January, it was already too late. The seeds of this year's harvest had
already been sown.

Laly is pleased his poppy field brings pain and misery to Russians a decade
after they withdrew in disgrace from his country. But that's simply a
fringe benefit. Like all Afghan poppy farmers, he grows opium because his
family would starve if he chose to raise a less lethal crop.

"We are compelled to grow the poppy because I have a big family to feed,"
says the father of eight boys and seven girls. "Only poppy can make money."

Laly has done the math. It would cost him $2,150 to plant wheat, which he
says he could sell for $1,345 -- a net loss of $805. His poppy field cost
him $4,835 to seed, money loaned to him by "rich people," he says. He
expects to earn $8,060 selling raw opium to the dealers in the Kandahar
drug bazaar.

Afterwards, his crop will be smuggled into neighbouring Iran or Pakistan,
where it will be refined and sold on the streets of western European
countries and Russia.

"We are not responsible for the people who are addicted to heroin. They
must cure themselves," Laly says. "It is the only way we are getting money."

Drug cultivation was a byproduct of the 1979 Soviet invasion. Heroin helped
fund the mujahedeen resistance that eventually repelled the foreign
invaders. Locals also sold heroin and hashish to occupying Soviet soldiers
to dull their wits and diminish their already dwindling will to fight.

In recent years, drought has ravaged Afghanistan. Only poppies, with their
high rate of return, are worth growing in the harsh, dry climate.

"It's hard work for us to grow this poppy. We have to spend a lot of time
in this field," Laly says, while a labourer carves a small irrigation
trench in the cracked mud. He knows heroin is a dangerous drug that holds
no benefit to users. "This is injurious towards health," he says, "so I
advise my children, my sons, my neighbours not to smoke or eat. I know this
is poison."

Twenty-one-year-old Ganan, Laly's oldest son, has no sympathy for those of
his generation in western countries that are addicted to the heroin his
family helps grow. "This is not our responsibility. I could say it is bad
thing that we are doing. But there is no other way. We are poor. It is
killing us."

Falal Mohammad Fazli, the Kandahar liaison with the United Nations Office
for Drug Control, says the Afghan government's attempts to buy out poppy
fields are doomed to fail.

He says the international community must include the eradication of poppy
farming as a central feature of their strategy to rebuild Afghanistan. So
far, he says, no one aid group has stepped forward to take the lead.

He recommends a series of remedial steps. These include loans of cash and
heavy equipment to farmers, as well as creative new ways to handle
irrigation and fertilization to compete with the harsh growing conditions.

"People have no money, no seed -- no nothing -- to grow anything else," he
says. "They should be supported by the international community. It is an
international problem. Afghanistan cannot solve this problem alone."

Troops Leave Farmers in Peace

Kandahar, Afghanistan

Capt. Phil Nicholson was awestruck by the vast fields of poppies he and his
fellow Canadian soldiers found high in the Tora Bora mountain range of
eastern Afghanistan earlier this month. He was quietly impressed by the
sophisticated level of irrigation that had allowed the plants to thrive.

The inhabitants of the Tora Bora region had been al-Qaeda sympathizers in
previous months when their mountainous community was home to the
terrorists. When the troops from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light
Infantry arrived, they got along fine with them too -- as soon as the
Canadian soldiers made it clear they weren't interested in interfering with
their poppy cultivation.

"We weren't there to tackle the poppy problem," Nicholson says.

"The solution is to target the processing labs and smugglers while not
punishing the farmers," he says. "I'm not encouraging the farmers to grow
poppies, but attacking the farmer is not necessarily the way to go."

Lt.-Col. Pat Stogran, the commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, says
he could not have ordered the destruction of the poppy fields near Tora
Bora even if he thought that was a good idea, which he does not.

The Canadian military's rules of engagement do not give him the authority
to arbitrarily order the destruction of what is still the property of local
Afghans, he said. "For some farmers, it is the only way to feed their
families. We will likely lose their support in the war against terrorism if
we don't offer them an alternative means of supporting themselves."